Ballsy sat there, lip twitching like the bulldog in Tom and Jerry

Ed Balls entered the Chamber at 11.58am, just behind his boss, Edward Miliband. Ballsy had on his tough-guy-shoulders look, when he bulks himself up, makes himself burlier, glares at the middle distance, tries to look imperishable.

But how safe is Bouncer Balls as Shadow Chancellor? He may sit there on the Opposition front bench like Spike the bulldog in Tom and Jerry, upper lip twitching at every passing bluebottle. But if yesterday’s PMQs was any guide, Mr Miliband (who took a pasting) must wish he had a different person in charge of his economic policy.

The half-hour session exposed horribly how Labour is in an economic cul-de-sac. On welfare payments and tax rates, in particular, the party is stuck in a test tube, nose pointing towards the sealed end. Engage reverse gear, lads! Quick! Before someone jams a rubber cork in the other end.

Mr Miliband was so kyboshed by Mr Balls’s insistence on old-fashioned Brownian socialism, that he had to avoid the big question of the moment – the benefits cap.

Instead he had to concentrate his anti-Government attack on some list of Coalition pledges. Dear oh dear. As PMQ sallies go, this was as weak as anything since the latter days of William Hague’s Opposition leadership.

A Tory championing state employees! The Left-wing position also allowed Mr Cameron, amazingly, to stand up for public-sector workers

The Labour benches sat in a puddle of gloom. The only person greatly gripped by what Mr Miliband was saying was Mr Balls, who gesticulated and heckled from his seat beside the Labour leader.

When the talk did get round – to Mr Cameron’s delight – to tax policies and welfare payments, the PM noted that Labour wants to continue giving child benefit to the rich. Why, he said, should workers on £30,000 a year have to give their tax money to people on £80,000? Labour was now the party for millionaires!

Tory and Lib Dem backbenchers loved this. They had not heard a minister skewer Labour’s position so succinctly. Here might be an attack that could appeal to the prized blue-collar voters. Mr Balls’s policies have abandoned the ‘squeezed middle’.

This Left-wing position also allowed Mr Cameron, amazingly, to stand up for public-sector workers. A Tory championing state employees! The PM pointed out that Labour voted for public-sector workers to make do with a one per cent rise but it wanted a bigger rise for benefit claimants. How, he said, was that fair?

Julie Hilling (Lab, Bolton W) asked why ‘hard-working people are having to pay for the Prime Minister’s economic failure?’

This provoked an instant roar of ridicule from the Lib Dem and Tory benches, who argued that it was precisely the economic failure of the last Labour government that had impoverished the country.

Even while Mr Cameron was speaking, Tory MPs were shouting: ‘Balls! Balls!’ And no, they were not passing comment on the PM’s answer.

The big danger for the Tories in Coalition was that Labour might overtake them on the Right. With Mr Balls as Shadow Chancellor, there is no danger of that. At a time when the voters are shifting to the Right, that is mad politics. And it is all down to obstinacy.

Mr Balls is determined not to accept – as David Miliband (Lab, South Shield) put it on Tuesday – that ‘all western economies need to refashion their social contract’.

Of Miliband Major and of Alistair Darling (Lab, Edinburgh SW) I could see no sign in the Chamber yesterday. Either of those men would surely make a Shadow Chancellor more congenial to Middle England.

The only other thing to report is that Mr Cameron was asked about fox hunting by a backbench Labour beard. ‘The only little red pests I pursue these days are in this House,’ said the PM.

The one red pest he should pet and pamper is Mr Balls. That man could be the Tories’ ace at the next election.